Microsoft Word Hardware Reconfiguration Methodology V final2

Reconfigurations

A hardware reconfiguration, with respect to reports [1, 5, 6, and 7] is also commonly known as operating system hardware reconfiguration, operating system reconfiguration, or reconfiguration, although they all have the same meaning. They can be collectively defined as “the ability for an operating system to effectively deal with any changes to the underlying hardware and effectively perpetuate those changes to the appropriate software layers of the operating system such that the changes should remain as transparent as possible to the user.”

Several things must be present for a successful reconfiguration prior to changing any hardware. Firstly, the operating system must actually provide software-based support for hardware detection/redetection. Subsequently, a mechanism must exist by which hardware detection/redetection can be triggered, either automatically at system start-up or manually by the system administrator at any given time. Thirdly, the changes to the operating system must be effectuated in such a manner that they are transparent to the end-user and do not generally require the administrator to manually modify system configuration files.

The majority of today’s Linux-based distribution kernels are built “out of the box” to support a wide variety of hardware devices and computing platforms. Most of these operating systems also support various mechanisms for detecting hardware during their initial setup and installation phases. They also have redetection-based tools to detect post-installation changes to the hardware and make the necessary operating system changes to the various operating system configuration files. Some operating systems detect hardware changes automatically, sometimes referred to as dynamic reconfiguration, while others do not have this ability and must be run manually, and referred to as static reconfiguration. So long as the operating system supports either dynamic or static, it can be said that the operating system is capable of hardware reconfiguration. Whether it is dynamic or static is perhaps a reflection of the level of sophistication of the operating system itself and therefore static and dynamic reconfigurations can be treated as one in the same. However, the ability for a reconfiguration to occur is commensurate with the maturity of the operating system. Older Linux systems often encountered difficulty supporting existing hardware; in such cases where older Linux systems are used, it is not realistic to expect it to support newer changes in hardware.

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